At issue, is a report from the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI)’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) that describes how the agency manipulated and altered a 30-day report from the National Academy of Engineers. Sen. Vitter and several House colleagues, including Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), called for the OIG investigation in response to allegations that officials with Interior had deliberately misrepresented scientific opinion on the merits of the deepwater drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We’ve seen facts manipulated and science ignored across the administration while they’ve developed policies with huge negative effects on the economy,” Sen. Vitter said. “We want the public to be aware of the administration’s misconduct, but we also want agencies to be transparent and explain their methods.”

The letter from Vitter co-authored by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.). is addressed to John Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor, is co-authored by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.).

“The IG investigation showed that not only had Interior violated the Information Quality Act (IQA), but there was direct involvement by the White House, specifically Carol Browner, to manipulate the summary documentation in violation of peer-review protocol,” the letter says. “…The investigation revealed blatant political influence, on what should have been an independent scientific assessment, to inaccurately represent the views of a particular team of scientists.”

In response to the explosion of British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010, Interior declared a moratorium on deepwater drilling, which it extended for six months that following May 27 in tandem with the 30 day report. An engineer who was asked to participate in the peer review process of the report’s recommendations sent a letter to Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. Vitter and Sen. Mary Landrieu (R-La.) making it clear that he and his colleagues did not officially endorse the moratorium. The letter was co-signed by other engineers and reads in part as follows:

“A group of those named in the Secretary of Interior’s Report, “INCREASED SAFETY MEASURES FOR ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ON THE OUTER CONTINENTAL SHELF” dated May 27, 2010 are concerned that our names are connected with the [deepwater drilling] moratorium as proposed in the executive summary of the report. There is an implication that we have somehow agreed to or “peer reviewed” the main recommendation of that report. This is not the case.” [emphasis is included in the original letter]

Luke Bolar, a spokesman for Vitter, identified White House Climate Change Advisor Carol Browner as a key figure responsible for manipulating and distorting the scientific language.

“Carol Browner is one of the leading voices of junk science,” he said. “She was the one who changed the summary language just hours before the 30 day review was received and added a sentence to make it appear as the engineers endorsed the moratorium when they hadn’t. That’s why we needed the IG investigation.”

Early in his term, Obama issued a “Presidential Memorandum on Scientific Integrity” that emphasized the importance of sound science in shaping and directing public policy, Vitter, Inhofe and Issa point out in their letter to the White House.

“Obama Science Advisor John Holdren has said that the Administration would make decisions based on the best possible science because, as the President has stated, ‘The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decision.’  Yet, it is clear that the Obama Administration cannot be trusted, as we continue to uncover more and more examples of faulty science being used as the justification for policies and increased regulations that will destroy jobs and harm our economy,” Sen. Inhofe observed.

The letter also notes that “Public trust in federal scientific work is waning…”and directs a series of questions to Holdren. They are as follows:

1.      When this IG report became public, who did you contact at Interior to discuss scientific integrity and allegations that Interior violated peer reviewed protocol?

2.      Did you speak directly with Secretary Salazar or anyone else identified in the IG report?

3.      What was the content of your conversations with the President and Carol Browner, as well as any other White House officials?

4.      What firewalls did you put in place at the White House to prevent future political influence from interfering with an independent scientific report?

5.      What actions were taken at both Interior and the White House, or otherwise government-wide, as a direct result of your efforts following the IG’s findings?

6.      What are your suggestions for strengthening the Information Quality Act in light of this incident specifically?

7.      What are your suggestions for strengthening the Information Quality Act in light of this incident?

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also comes in for criticism.

In April, a National Research Council (NRC) panel of independent scientists found the quality of work that was being done by the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) chemical assessment program to be below par. They concluded EPA’s scientific work did not support EPA’s scientific conclusions.  They found the problem to be one that is recurring at the agency.

The NRC panel concluded:

Overall, the committee found that EPA’s draft assessment was not prepared in a logically consistent fashion, lacks clear links to an underlying conceptual framework, and does not sufficiently document methods and criteria used to identify evidence for selecting and evaluating studies.  Moreover, many of the general problems with the EPA formaldehyde health assessment have been identified by other Research Council committees that reviewed other EPA chemical assessments in recent years.  For instance, there have been recurring problems with clarity and transparency of the methods, even though the documents have grown considerably in length.  The committee concluded that if the methodologic issues are not addressed, future assessments may suffer from the same general problems highlighted in this report.”

The article, a fawning exhibition of non-investigative journalism, referred to Prend as the “Guru of Green.” Reuters neglected to question whether Prend’s close government connections had created conflicts of interest as he secured multi-million dollar government loans and grants for his investments.

Prend lobbied the Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Carol Browner, for Solyndra’s doomed $535 million DOE loan and presidential endorsement. Prend also visited the White House at least twice and discussed two companies with Browner while lobbying for Solyndra. (The White House refuses to release the second company’s name.)

Prend’s other investments suggest that he is benefiting from taxpayer support for far more than just two companies.

Prend is a board member for scandal-plagued concrete sealant manufacturer Hycrete. Around 2008, Hycrete received a $2 million Corps of Engineers earmark from Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-IN) shortly before company executives donated $20,000 to his campaign and the DCCC. In July 2009, former Hycrete CEO David Rosenberg was invited to a WH Summit on Energy Innovation and Jobs where Obama praised Hycrete as a job creation leader.

Prend was apparently involved in another RockPort Capital investment, Soliant Energy. Soliant went bankrupt even after receiving a $4 million DOE grant. Prend also apparently sits on the board of SustainX, which recently secured a $5.39 million DOE grant.

In late 2010, RockPort Capital invested in and appointed co-founder Wilber James to the board of troubled energy start-up Ener1. Within months, the Elkhart, Indiana company received a $118.5 million stimulus grant and a visit from Joe Biden. During his visit, Biden inspected the electric-drive THINK City vehicle, an Ener1 and RockPort investment. The THINK City vehicle was manufactured in Elkhart prior to THINK’s fourth bankruptcy in June 2011. Think is a Norwegian-based company. Elkhart was also where President Obama announced $2.4 billion in electric-drive grants.

Another RockPort investment, Southwest Windpower, has also been honored by a visit from President Obama and a plug during his weekly address. Southwest was afforded tax credits shortly before receiving a $10 million joint investment from GE.

Reuters’ most glaring omission is its failure to discuss the implications of Prend’s position as the director of the DOE National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) National Advisory Council (appointed in 2007) and the Solar Technology Review Panel Chairman. His position with NREL to influence the government with federal loans and grants for green technology would appear to create a serious conflict of interest.

With some research, it seems that Prend’s investments and conflicts of interest warrant close journalistic scrutiny–more serious than Reuters has seen fit to offer.

President Obama speaks with former Energy Czar
(mentioned in our latest Judicial Watch Report) Carol Browner

Barack Obama has made a number of decisions during his tenure proving that he has little regard for the U.S. Constitution or the rule of law. At the top of the list is Obama’s penchant for installing radical leftists as czars in his administration without the constitutionally-mandated vetting and approval by the U.S. Senate.

These political appointees, called “czars,” are powerful and difficult to track. Nonetheless, Judicial Watch’s investigation team has taken on the important and exhaustive task of documenting these czar appointments (which number 45 according to our latest tally) and detailing the control these czars have over government operations.

Among the report’s findings are the following:

• Czar appointees have seized unprecedented control over major aspects of government policy and programs. In some instances, unconfirmed czars have authority, in seeming violation of the U.S. Constitution, over certain Senate-confirmed officers.
• A number of the czars have been linked to scandals, thefts and kickbacks, flagrant and offensive statements, conflicts of interest, and radical leftist political ideologies and policies.

Barack Obama’s unconstitutional use of czars to help run his administration is at odds with republican, limited, and accountable government. Obama has simply installed his allies in various positions of power while thumbing his nose at Congress and the American people.

As we document in this report, too many of these czars have proven to be corrupt or radical (or sometimes both). No wonder the Obama administration fights tooth-and-nail to allow these czars to operate in secret. Thankfully, our investigators managed to develop this comprehensive list of czars as part of our efforts to ensure government accountability. (Our report details 18 unfilled czar positions!)

The result these new czars and their efforts is in a new Judicial Watch special report entitled “President Obama’s Czars.”

From the report’s introduction:

This Judicial Watch Special Report analyzes the proliferation of so-called “czars” in the Obama administration. President Barack Obama has installed personal advisors in czar positions in the White House and has created new czar positions elsewhere in the Executive Branch. As of the date of this report, the number of czars that have been appointed by the President, or by others in his administration, appears to total 45. In addition, there are as many as 18 other unfilled or planned czar positions.

Many of these “czars” are unconfirmed by the Senate and are largely unaccountable to Congress. Further, their activities are often outside the reach of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), creating a veil of secrecy about their precise role in the administration.

By the way, it is important to note that Obama’s list of czars is constantly shifting as scandals force some corrupt czars from office (see former Consumer Czar Elizabeth Warren for just one example).

Moreover, every time Obama creates a new federal government bureaucracy he also creates the opportunity for more czars to join the Obama Big Government team. For example, Townhall’s Lurita Doan reported this week that more czars may be on the way courtesy of the president’s new “Jobs Act”:

Obama is proposing a new group of czars as a part of his “jobs” act – the American Infrastructure Financing Authority (AIFA) czars. President Obama’s newest czars will be given the authority to manage over a trillion dollars of federal funding for roads, bridges, buildings, waterways, dams and other infrastructure.

We’ll be sure to add them to our list.

Following the BP tragedy, the White House commissioned the Secretary of the Interior to provide a safety report on offshore drilling. Secretary Salazar pulled in a panel of seven outside advisors to assist in his analysis of the safety of offshore drilling, and provide recommendations for going forward. A final draft of this report was sent to White House Climate Czar Carol Browner’s office before being forwarded to the president. Last week, it was reported that Browner’s staff edited the document to imply that the outside advisors recommended a drilling moratorium, when in fact this was not true. The tailored draft was given to the president, and the policy was made.

Whether or not the recommendation of outside advisors would have changed minds regarding the drilling ban is debatable. What isn’t debatable is the resulting economic destruction in the Gulf from President Obama’s decision based – in part – on information from a falsified document.

Drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico provide employment for over 150,000 Americans. As a result of the halting of this activity, the region stands to lose19,500lost jobs, $5 billion in unrealized economic activity, and nearly $240 million in uncollected state and local tax revenue, according to a conservative estimate using government modeling by noted LSU economist Dr. Joseph Mason. This was a harsh blow during what the President himself has described as the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Make no mistake: these job losses lie solely on President Obama’s shoulders. And for the thousands of Americans impacted by this decision, nothing the President says or does will make it right. But the President can still prove that he is being true to his promise of transparency in government by holding Czar Browner accountable for her reckless disregard for the livelihoods of thousands of Gulf families whose only crime, it seems, was their employment in the oil and gas industry.

Lost in the news of the elections is a blockbuster story soon to be swept under the carpet, Politico reports:

“The White House rewrote crucial sections of an Interior Department report to suggest an independent group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month ban on offshore oil drilling, the Interior inspector general says in a new report.

In the wee hours of the morning of May 27, a staff member to White House energy adviser Carol Browner sent two edited versions of the department report’s executive summary back to Interior. The language had been changed to insinuate the seven-member panel of outside experts – who reviewed a draft of various safety recommendations – endorsed the moratorium, according to the IG report obtained by POLITICO.”

In weasel words that even make this Washingtonian of twenty years blush, the Department of the Interior Inspector General writes:

“’The White House edit of the original DOI draft executive summary led to the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer-reviewed by the experts,’ the IG report states, without judgment on whether the change was an intentional attempt to mislead the public.” (emphasis added)

One can certainly “lead to an inference“. But … led to the implication? Oh, right. You are trying not to say “implied“.

This is Exhibit A why law school drill into every first year’s head do not use the passive voice. It obscures meaning, begs questions, and diminishes confidence and credibility in the speaker. You come off as trying to weaselly avoid saying something. Like this guy.

And here is the, ahem, ‘implication’ placed in the administration’s twisted report before asserting the recommendations of engineers who in fact did not approve or recommend the moratorium. Prepare yourself to wade through the fog:

“the recommendations contained in this report have been peer reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering”.

An implication that is “led to”. A ‘lie’. Whatever. All good. (Except to the federal judge who caught…er, was led into… it, too; see p. 3).

So, the sexed up report implied something that wasn’t true — that ’science’ and not ideology drove the numb-skulled left-wing fever dream of a drilling moratorium still effectively ravaging the Gulf Coast’s economy — an ‘implication’ which was nowhere to be found in the original report before the political and ideological spinmasters were called in late the night before the White House issued its sexed up document. They moved some language around…’implying’ a politically desirable conclusion that was patently untrue.

Contrast this with the allegedly scandalous toning down of unsupportable language in a legally meaningless climate report to the UN by former George W. Bush staffer Phil Cooney, who became the subject of a smear job in Al Gore’s silly sci-fi movie (treated in detail here). The Obama administration’s stunt entailed sexing up claims for political/ideological purposes. Where’s the outrage? (come to think of it…where’s Gore?)

Not toning hyperbole down. Sexing claims up unsupportably.

The former was scandalous — we were told. The other is being dismissed by the same crowd as, if anything, simply a result of people not reading the report objectively.

Which is where things get worse. Heads now really must roll.

“Steve Black, energy counselor to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, was the department’s point man for the safety report…Black said he didn’t have any issues with the White House edit; he and his staffer both told the IG it never occurred to them that an objective reader would conclude that peer reviewers had supported the six-month moratorium.”

Ah. Interior thinks White House did nothing wrong in…rewriting outside parties’ work to fit the ideology and agenda of Interior and the White House. So I assume BP can indeed clear itself, too?

But the smear of others never ends with people who are never wrong. Guess who the unobjective parties alluded to here are? The scientists who wrote the report that was re-written in the wee hours by an uncomfirmed (because she is unconfirmable) anti-energy czar’s ideologues!

That’s right: The White House is blaming the scientists for not recognizing their own report after the ideologues got through with it. It was they who read their bastardized work and complained. Two of the peer reviewers, upset about the ‘implication’, sent letters to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. The DOI sent letters of apology for the misunderstanding.

Now, having been outed by one of their own, if with weasel-worded friendly fire, the administration blames the people they wronged, for not being objective in reading how people flagrantly mischaracterized their own conclusions.

Incredible. And to think, coming from Carol Browner’s office! Who knew? (well, I did, dedicating the better part of a chapter — “Van Jones Was No Accident:  The Obama Administration’s Radical ‘Green’ Activists” — to her and her M.O.). Orwell and Nixon both live on in the Obama administration.

The Obama administration hyped the estimates at an Aug. 4 press briefing with White House energy czar Carol Browner and NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. The report immediately sparked controversy among scientists for the rosy projection that three-quarters of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico had disappeared.

Bill Lehr, a senior scientist at NOAA and an author of the report, told congressional investigators that data supporting the study is still unavailable and the peer review remains unfinished. Lehr also said the decision to release the report was made by the White House, not the government’s lead science agency for oil spills.

A spokesman for NOAA did not respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking member on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called it irresponsible for the administration to release the report before it was done.

This is yet another in a long line of examples where the White House’s preoccupation with the public relations of the oil spill has superseded the realities on the ground. It is deeply troubling that White House officials apparently preempted the completion and review of a scientific study on the oil spill by NOAA scientists in order to tout conclusions that many experts believe may be deeply flawed.

The government report instantly made headlines for the astonishing conclusion that approximately 75 percent of the oil had been collected, burned, skimmed or simply disappeared. Given the magnitude of the spill — the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history — some scientists concluded it was premature to draw such conclusions.

Another independent study released this week estimated as much as 79 percent of the oil remains in the Gulf, beneath the water’s surface.

Lehr’s admission that the peer review wasn’t completed in advance of the report’s release undermines the administration’s claim that it was. In fact, his boss at NOAA first made the statement at the White House’s Aug. 4 briefing.

“The report was produced by scientific experts from a number of different agencies, federal agencies, with peer review of the calculations that went into this by both other federal and non-federal scientists,” Lubchenco said.

Browner, who would go on NBC’s “Meet the Press” days later to trumpet the report, echoed Lubchenco’s comments.

“This has all been — as Dr. Lubchenco said — been subjected to a scientific protocol, which means you peer review, peer review and peer review,” Browner said. “You look at what the inputs are.  You look at what the models are. All of this has been made available.”

Bluey directs the Center for Media and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

First, the merely good news arising from Holdren’s odious openness: it floated to the surface just in time for my new book coming out Monday (but available for pre-order now, before today’s ’s Ways and Means Committee “green jobs” hearing causes a run on them! Really.). In these pages Holdren, Carol Browner and a few others receive close inspection, particularly in Chapter 3 “Van Jones Was No Accident: Obama’s Radicals” (also relevant to this discussion is Chapter 6, “Green Eggs and Scam: The Wholesale Fraud of ‘Green Jobs’”).

More on all of that, including some pretty startling internal documents, in a few days.

Now for the even better news. As detailed in “Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America“, Holdren is a longtime global-cooling-then-warming alarmist who’s also on record advocating the constitutionality of sterilizing the public through the drinking water supply to address the “population crisis” when it reaches the point that his kind believe is just  too much to bear.

As is also detailed, he and his ilk like to see (and shriek) crisis pretty much everywhere they look, and transparently as an excuse for their real obsession with massive government usurpations of individual liberties — or, ahem, Power Grabs. So to them that point where statist seizures are urgently required is always right…about…nnnow.

Which brings us to what is most important about this week’s news, Holdren’s implicit yet inescapable admission of the Big Lie: his thesis captured on tape is that energy use here in the good ol’ been-top-dog-too-long USA must be dramatically curbed, because “renewable” energy will not (gasp!) replace those conventional energy sources, and some serious sacrifice is therefore in order:

“I think ultimately that the rate of growth of material consumption is going to have to come down, and there’s going to have to be a degree of redistribution of how much we consume, in terms of energy and material resources, in order to leave room for people who are poor to become more prosperous.”

Got it. Spread the energy around. Even though they push an agenda on the promise that windmills, solar panels and as yet undiscovered but breakthrough pixie dust will carry the day, they know full well that there is not and will not be enough energy in the hydrocarbon-constrained world they are designing.

Now, energy poverty is a terrible, dirty, anti-environmental thing. But imposing it is a long-held fantasy of the Left. When you control power, you control an awful lot. So, as a fella Holdren knows is fond of saying, let me be perfectly clear: The “green energy” agenda, the latest label slapped on the global warming agenda, is precisely what we have long argued it is. It is energy rationing.

This means artificial, state-created energy scarcity. And Holdren’s comments admit it.

He acknowledges one nasty little side effect of his control freak, redistributionist philosophy when put into practice, which is that the old-fashioned energy sources onto which they seek to force you cannot and will not allow us to maintain our prosperity.

So much for that business about us all becoming millionaires from selling windmills to each other. Not so surprised are those among you who recall how the utopians’ little experiment in the last century showed that state control of resources produces so much prosperity you need to build a wall to contain it.

What Holdren admits is possibly a major reason that people have for a century and a half abandoned what Obama rather cluelessly calls the “new technology” — wind and solar energy — in favor of hydrocarbons or “fossil fuels” as soon as they can. Which ability, as my new book makes clear, Team Obama is working to ensure quickly comes to an end.

But at least we now agree on this. And since no free society would do to itself what the Holdrens (and Obamas) of the world demand, their agenda does indeed require the Power Grab — in the name of staving off “crisis!” — because the sort of steely eyed discipline required to impose the rationing, or re-introduction of poverty to the masses in the name of progress, can only come from the state.

Sort of all makes sense now, in a twisted way. So let us praise this candor for also coming just in time for the Senate’s stab at re-branding cap-and-trade legislation, expected to be unveiled next week if, fortunately, led by the Dream Team of John Kerry and Lindsey Graham. I never thought I would say this, but thank you, John Holdren.